Freshly popped popcorn, with its characteristic aroma and taste, has long been popular, especially when flavored, e.g. salted and flavored.
The availability of freshly popped and flavored popcorn, however, has been limited to popcorn stands, or home preparation by a laborious procedure which has required the use of various oils and/or a fat fryer. Thus, for example, ready-to-pop popcorn has long been available in ready-to-heat, expandable packages wherein the unpopped popcorn is coated or packaged in a vegetable fat, oil or shortening which serves to both fry the popcorn during heating over gas stoves or, more recently, in microwave ovens, and which serves as a coating or carrier for added salt, sugar or various other flavorings and/or coloring, to give a popped corn having salt and flavoring adhering, to the surface of the popped kernels.
These prior art procedures have all required oil or fat to adhere the flavor to the product, which results in an oily and greasy texture and feel as well as high calorie content. Oil popped popcorn has become less acceptable to consumers in recent years with the availability of dryer, greaseless hot air popped popcorn.
Hot air corn poppers have the obvious advantage of producing popcorn which is neither greasy nor oily in taste and which is lower in calories. It has been found, however, that freshly popped popcorn from hot air poppers does not retain significant levels of added salt or flavoring to give a product acceptable to flavored popcorn consumers. The use of prior art oil based carriers for salt and flavorant to give a flavored popcorn upon heating in conventional hot oil poppers or microwave ovens does not give acceptable popped corn when used in hot air popcorn poppers in view of the high level of burning or smoking produced by heating of oil in these hot air poppers.
Aoplicants have unexpectedly found that a ready-to-eat, freshly popped salted and flavored popcorn can be obtained in hot air poppers through use of a novel, lipid-free coating, containing an edible adhesive, flavorings such as salt and various other optional flavorings and colorings, which is uniformly coated over the hull of the unpopped popcorn. The resulting product is a free-flowing product which can be conveniently packaged in jars and can be easily poured, as needed, into a hot air popper without any mess, burning or smoke. The resulting product will produce a freshly popped, low oil popcorn which retains virtually all of the added salt and flavor on the popped kernel without burning or smoking.
It is the principal object of this invention to provide an unpopped popcorn and method of preparation thereof which is specifically adapted to use in hot air poppers for preparing an already salted and flavored popcorn without need for the use of oil, fat or shortening.
It is a further object of this invention to provide an already salted and flavored low oil popcorn for popping in hot air poppers.
It is a still further object of this invention to provide an already flavored popcorn which is uniformly coated in a freeflowing, unpopped form and which, when popped in a hot air popper, will retain substantially all of its flavorant on the hull portion of the popped corn.
These and other objects of this invention will become apparent from the following detailed description and preferred embodiment of Applicants' invention.